When I was a school kid I learned that gravity was the reason why things fell. I learned that they fell at a rate of 9.8 metres per second. Later I took an interest in general relativity, which told me that my understanding of gravity was naïve and incomplete. Since then I took an interest in quantum gravity and dark gravity and how they shape our reality. An understanding of these phenomena (even a basic one) has opened my eyes to realities that I didn’t appreciate before. I see gravity in everything.
When a toddler takes his first faltering steps, I see gravity. When I look up and see stars arcing across the heavens, I see gravity. When I sit on the beach and watch the ocean breathe in and out, I see gravity. When I look at the eucalyptus tree in our yard stretch its mangled limbs, I see gravity. It’s everywhere and I see it.
But this insight and awareness did not come to me in a flash. It evolved as my understanding of gravity evolved.
So it is with the way my understanding of horses and how they operate.
As an example, let’s look at the concept that a horse’s behaviour is determined by its thought.
I began hearing about a horse’s thoughts many years ago when I first began riding. But it came in the form of things like, “watch out because that horse might bite you.” That taught me to watch for when that horse was thinking about biting me.
Much later, when I already had a long resume of success in competition, my ancient foreign friend told me why his yellow horse was friends with his brown horse but didn’t like his light brown horse. Their behaviour towards each other was linked to how they felt about each other. It inspired me to question if this explained why I got along better with some horses than others. Was it specifically about how I influenced their thoughts or were they just generally bad-tempered?
Then I attended Ray Hunt clinics. Ray talked about getting to the horse’s feet through his mind. But consideration of the mind was almost an afterthought. It explains why so many of his students have missed the importance of the mind and replaced it with moving the feet.
Up to this point, my understanding of the mind of a horse was basic and very much black and white and naïve.
Then I happened across the idea of hard versus soft thoughts. A horse could have thoughts that caused bad behaviour because the thoughts were hard and negative. Alternatively, a horse could have soft thoughts that evoked soft behaviours and compliant responses.
Then I met Harry Whitney. He helped put the ideas I had been playing around with into a more useful and clearer understanding. Harry showed me how the thoughts are in everything and how tightly bound they are to a horse’s emotions. Up until that point, nobody had talked about that.
Harry also showed me how we can influence a horse’s thoughts by changing how he feels. He helped take the concept from pure theory to a practical approach that could help every horse. After much analysis and experimentation, I discovered all the talk about horse training being primarily about moving the feet was not the direction I wanted to go. Those ideas of moving the feet began to unravel in my mind and my work. The flaws became apparent.
My grasp of a horse’s thought continues to evolve. And the way I implement those evolving ideas continues to change.
So the concept of a horse having thoughts was on my mind before I met Harry. But Harry and many others have held my hand in refining my understanding and giving me ways to make it work in a way that is better than anything else I have tried. Now I see a horse’s thought in everything it does. I see changing those thoughts are the priority in everything I ask it to do. I see influencing a horse’s emotions as the key to changing its thoughts every time. It doesn’t matter what a horse is doing or what I want it to do. Like gravity, I see a horse's thoughts in everything.
About 3 or 4 years ago, a very popular clinician told me directly that he didn’t have time to bother with what a horse was thinking. Recently I noticed he is bringing ideas about the importance of a horse’s thoughts into the conversation at his clinics, however, he is far from actually incorporating it into his work. But I don't give up hope that may come in time.
This is true of every aspect of horsemanship. I believe our understanding of horses and training is mostly evolved from stuff we knew before. Like our knowledge, our understanding increases slowly and by stealth. Very little of what we learn comes to us as a sudden appearance.
The only other thing I would like to add is the realization that understanding is not always linear. When we learn a principle, sometimes a deeper understanding of that principle requires we go back a step and adopt a different principle. Learning does not always entail forward progress with what we learned yesterday leading to what we learn today. I believe this is no different for our horses as it is for us.
Nikaine Iacono from a clinic in Maine, USA. I see Nikaline’s thoughts, the horse’s thoughts and gravity.